


The Red Angels

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Dimension Travel, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22414099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: Gabrielle Burnham wakes up on a starship that shouldn't exist, with a version of her daughter who doesn't seem to know her mother was ever supposed to be dead.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	The Red Angels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



Gabrielle Burnham opened her eyes to a white blur.

She blinked a few times, trying to bring her surroundings into focus. She ached all over, and the not-especially-comfortable mattress beneath her wasn’t helping. Perhaps a hospital of some kind--maybe a starship’s medical bay? Had the Discovery crew found some way to keep her there after all? 

And next to her was--that was Michael, she knew it, it had to be, but she looked different from the Michael she’d just left. Her hair was longer, for one thing, and pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes also held none of the sadness or confusion the other Michael’s had upon seeing her.

“Where… where am I?”

“You’re on the Shenzhou,” Michael said. “We found you on the second moon of Wen II--Mom, how did you get there? You were on Kenza IV, I talked to you just last week, you were telling me about those new birds in the park…”

_The Shenzhou?_ Had she heard right? In the timeline she came from, the Shenzhou had been destroyed... _but I of all people should know there are others out there._ “I’m not sure,” she said in answer to Michael’s question.

“You’re not sure?” Michael said, her eyebrows knitting together with worry. She looked up at the man in the white uniform. “Doctor Nambue, are you sure nothing’s wrong with her memory?”

“My scans didn’t turn up anything like that,” said the doctor. “But it could be--or she might not be who she appears to be, though the scans showed her to be entirely human, and everything I’ve detected lines up. But there was a lot of tachyon energy around her--a lot like we detected on that anomaly we came through.”

“So she might be from another version of reality?” said Michael.

“That is another possibility,” said Nambue. “And given what we know about where we are now, I’d say it’s quite likely.”

For a moment, Gabrielle thought about allowing herself to imagine. A timeline where she might have been part of her daughter’s life, been there through her teenage years and seen her off to Starfleet Academy and celebrated her assignment to the Shenzhou. Where she might still talk to Michael regularly, hear about her achievements and struggles rather than simply watching them from afar, and talk to her about things as mundane as birds in a park.

But there was no time for any of that. There was no time for any of _this,_ wherever she had ended up.

“My mind is not the issue here,” Gabrielle said. “Something has happened to this reality--perhaps to time itself. I am from a timeline that is in grave danger if I do not get back there and complete the mission I set myself.”

Michael and Doctor Nambue looked at each other. “So are we,” Michael said. “So are all of us.”

_“I must say, I don’t understand this,” Captain Georgiou said. “Captain Lorca’s style may have been a little unorthodox at times, but he was always a good man and a loyal Federation officer. I know the war changed all of us, but not like this.”_

_“And why does he keep coming after_ us?” _Michael wondered. “What could we have that he wants?”_

_“In any case, we can keep all of this in mind for later,” said Georgiou. “What we need to do now is stop him. Saru, have you anything to report?”_

_“My scans have detected some sort of temporal anomaly,” Saru said._

_“And what is the relevance of this?” said Georgiou. “Is it a threat to the Shenzhou?”_

_“I do not think so,” said Saru. “But I believe our purposes may be served by taking the ship inside the anomaly for a little while.”_

_“You’re suggesting we run away,” Michael said. “I can’t believe this--that we just abandon our fellow officers, the entire Federation to whatever the hell Lorca is trying to accomplish--”_

_“No,” said Saru. “I am suggesting nothing of the sort. Whatever you may think of me, Commander Burnham, I would not abandon a fellow officer, let alone the entire Federation. But you appear to be suggesting we simply go up against them--against our fellow officers, as you put it--on our own. My scans have detected Starfleet signals from inside that anomaly. Vulcan ones, too, and many more I have been unable to identify. If they are unaware of what has been happening, they ought to be warned, and whether they are or not, perhaps they could be of assistance to us.”_

_“You may be right,” said Georgiou. “If nothing else, it might throw him off for a little while. Buy us a bit more time.”_

“But when we arrived,” Michael said, “we couldn’t find anyone here. Not Federation ships, not Vulcan ships, no ships at all but our own. And the gateway we came through seemed to have sealed behind us. That was three days ago, and we haven’t been able to find a way back since.”

“And how… how long have I been here?”

“We found you yesterday,” Michael said. “You’d been unconscious ever since.”

“I can’t stay here,” said Gabrielle, sitting up. She had to get back to her mission, back to the--where was the time suit? She knew she hadn’t been wearing it when she’d been pulled away from the Discovery-- _away from her own Michael_ \-- _and the time crystal was destroyed_ , she remembered that now. But time suit or no time suit, she had to find some way to stop Control. “I have to go.”

“Oh, no,” said Doctor Nambue. “Dr. Burnham, you’re not going anywhere. You may not be suffering from amnesia, but you did sustain significant injuries when you arrived in this reality. You need to let me finish treating you here.”

Gabrielle glared at him. “There are more important things happening.” She got off the bed and strode purposefully toward the doors of sickbay. “I need to speak to your captain.” Her legs started to shake and wobble under her, and she found herself clutching onto the doorframe.

“Mom!” She felt Michael’s hands on her, steadying her. “I can go tell her whatever you need her to know. You need to rest.”

Gabrielle let out a short laugh. “You’re one to talk. I’ve seen you--” She caught herself. “No. Not you. I am not your mom. We don’t have time for this. Whatever your reasons for coming to this place, we need to get out now.”

* * *

From the way Captain Georgiou explained it, the crew of the Shenzhou didn’t know much more about this place than Gabrielle did.

The gateway the ship had come through had not reopened since. They couldn’t even seem to detect it. But from time to time, they got similar readings from other parts of space--other gateways, perhaps opening into other times or places. 

And now, their sensors had just found what seemed to be another gateway, opening right above the third moon of Kel II. It had only remained open for a couple of minutes, but in that time, another humanoid life sign had appeared on their side of it--the first such life sign to pass through one of the gateways since the Shenzhou had arrived.

Gabrielle beamed down to the moon with Captain Georgiou when the Shenzhou arrived there. Everything around them was desert. Grey sand stretched out in every direction, as far as Gabrielle could see.

There was something in the distance, something that seemed to shine in the light. Gabrielle and Georgiou made their way towards it.

It was a space suit-- _no,_ Gabrielle realized, _a time suit_ \--a time suit just like Gabrielle’s own. And inside it was a human life sign.

_Can this be another version of me?_ Gabrielle thought. Was she about to meet herself? It was something she was sure everybody who had studied time travel closely had thought about, herself included, but her own experience hadn’t seemed to work that way, and amidst everything else that had happened, she’d forgotten about it entirely. Now, she moved cautiously towards the person in the suit, wondering if the same circumstances had brought her here.

But it wasn’t Gabrielle. Gabrielle knew it as soon as she looked down through the window of the suit’s helmet, because the person whose face she saw--

It was Michael.

* * *

_Michael stood on the bridge of the Selaka, facing the crew. Eight Vulcan faces stared back at her._

_She avoided looking at one in particular. Until a couple of weeks ago, she had not seen or spoken to her brother, Spock, in years. She was not sure he had truly forgiven her for everything that had happened--the things she had said to him that one awful day when they were young or their father choosing to send her to the Vulcan Expeditionary Group over him--nor was she entirely convinced that he should. But she knew that if she looked at him now, he might see things she didn’t want anybody to see._

_“In order to ensure as events happen as we have seen them, I must be the one to use the time suit to recreate those events,” she explained._

_Her acceptance to the Vulcan Expeditionary Group had not been the end of her desire to prove herself. Once she had earned her place there, she never quite felt as though she belonged, never sure she was wanted. She knew it was not logical--they would not have accepted her if she did not meet their standards--and that knowledge only made her more convinced there had been some mistake._

_When her biological mother had unexpectedly appeared, at first Michael had not even wanted to acknowledge their connection to the rest of the crew. Her mother, as soon became clear, hardly seemed to mind at first. She had been single-mindedly devoted to a mission she would eventually explain--a mission Michael herself knew she had to take up now._

_“To prevent Control's continued evolution, I must then take the Selaka, and the sphere data contained within her systems, through the wormhole. The ship will be on autopilot. The rest of the crew will leave in advance.” She pointedly looked in the exact opposite direction from where Spock stood as she continued. “There will be no return trip.”_

_Later, Michael sat on the bed in her quarters. She knew she ought to meditate, to ensure she was prepared for what lay ahead, that she could approach her mission with all of the logic it required._

_She also wanted to compose a message for her mother and father. It was not for sentimental purposes, she told herself. They deserved at least to know what had become of her._

_The doorbell to her quarters rang. “Who--” Michael started to say, but before she could, the doors opened to reveal Spock standing in the doorway._

_“Surely you did not think you could leave without speaking to me,” Spock said, raising an eyebrow._

_“I addressed all of you,” Michael said._

_“That you did.”_

_“But you wished to say goodbye to me privately.”_

_“No,” said Spock. “That was not my intention.”_

_“Then what was it?”_

_“I intend to accompany you.”_

_That was not what Michael had expected. “No,” she said. “As I have already explained, it is most logical for me to go alone. There is no need for you to join me, or for Starfleet to lose a fine officer.”_

_“You are incorrect,” Spock said. “It is most logical for you to have backup, in case you are unable to carry out the mission alone.”_

_“Are you suggesting that I will fail?” Michael said._

_“One must allow for such possibilities,” said Spock._

This has nothing to do with logic, _Michael thought._ This is what Starfleet has made of him. _Pointing that out to him might change his mind. It might get him to stay here, where he belonged, and let her go. Let her go to ensure a world where he and the rest of the Federation would be safe._

_But she had to let him make his own choices. She knew that now._

* * *

Gabrielle suspected this new Michael had no more idea of how to react to her than she did to this version of her daughter.

She had known, of course, that in the timeline she had come from, Michael had spent the remainder of her childhood and adolescence on Vulcan. She had seen her there many times as she traveled back and forth through time, had seen her slowly adapt to life with Sarek and Amanda and Spock, seen her take on Vulcan mannerisms and live by their principles. 

But she did not know the woman her daughter had become. She did not know any of the women Michael had become--not this one, not the one who had been there when she woke up, certainly not the one on the Discovery. And they didn’t know the woman Gabrielle had become, either.

The longer Gabrielle spent on the Shenzhou, the more it sank in that she had hardly interacted with anyone in years. She wasn’t used to all the activity surrounding her, after so long of only being able to observe, and never for long. 

She wasn’t used to being able to get help from others. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that at this point.

And she was no longer used to dealing with problems a bit smaller in scale and stakes than the fate of every sentient life form in the galaxy. 

“She still needs you, you know.”

It was Captain Georgiou. “She’s not the only one.”

“I mean it.” Georgiou walked up to stand next to Gabrielle. “I know how much you mean to my version of her. How much you did to make her the incredible woman she is today.”

“That wasn’t me.” Why did no one seem able to understand that?

“It is true this new Burnham is different,” said Georgiou. “Instead of one mother and one father, she has two of each. But you are the closest thing to any she has right now.”

“She doesn’t want me.”

“Somehow, I doubt that. I doubt it very much,” Georgiou said. “And to the extent that it is true, it is merely because she has not allowed herself to do so. She has suppressed it. She has spent years hiding from what you are to her.” She gave Gabrielle a significant look. “And she isn’t the only one.”

* * *

Gabrielle stood at the doorway to stellar cartography, watching. Michael stood in front of a large holographic display, on which the area of space in which they had appeared could be seen.

She wore a jumpsuit that was of a similar style to the current Starfleet uniform, but which bore no Starfleet rank or division designation. Gabrielle knew this version of her daughter was not a Starfleet officer, but rather a member of the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. She remembered seeing glimpses of what she now suspected must be the same timeline this Michael was from--though she had seen so many, they all mixed together in her mind, and she was not at all sure where each had diverged from the others, or exactly which things the young woman who stood before her had experienced.

Gabrielle cleared her throat. "Captain Georgiou asked me to assist you," she said.

Michael turned to see her standing there. Her expression hardened. "Tell her I am thankful, but I am not in need of assistance."

"I want to get out of here as much as you do," Gabrielle said. "And she seemed to think this was the best way for us to reach that goal faster." Of course, given their earlier conversation, a part of Gabrielle suspected the captain had other motives in mind for this particular decision... but regardless, Gabrielle couldn't just do nothing. She just couldn't, not after such a long time of every move and every choice she made being dedicated to stopping Control.

Michael raised an eyebrow. "Well, if this is merely a practical decision," she said, "I suppose I am none to interfere." She looked back down at her computer console, as if to shut down any conversation between them.

Gabrielle set herself up at another console, near Michael's but with a couple of others in between. She began looking through what had already been done. It looked as though Michael had been trying to work out a way to predict when another gateway would open, and where.

"This is quite impressive work," Gabrielle said.

"I studied quantum mechanics at the Science Academy," said Michael. "I have since continued that area of specialization further into my career."

Gabrielle knew the Michael she had met on the Discovery had studied that as well, but had ultimately become a xenoanthropologist--just as Mike had been, before the two of them had been recruited to Section 31.

"I never meant to leave you, you know," Gabrielle said. "I was coming back for you and Dad, I always was, everything was supposed to be--"

"If you came here to have an emotional conversation with me, this is neither the time nor the place," Michael said. 

"I just didn't want you to feel like you were alone here," Gabrielle said. "That's all."

Michael raised an eyebrow. "I have been alone, in a sense, for twenty-three years," she said. "I intended to travel to the future alone. I ultimately had to leave alone after all, when Spock's shuttle malfunctioned. Why should this place be any different?"

Guilt twisted in Gabrielle's chest as she thought of not only the Michael in front of her, or the one on the Discovery, but the countless, surely infinite Michael Burnhams in infinitely diverging timelines whose lives had all been uprooted in the same awful moment.

"Because your brother was right," Gabrielle said, remembering what this Michael had told them when she had explained how she'd come to be in this place. "It's one thing to be alone when you have to be. But there's no purpose--you might even say no logic--in insisting on it when you don't have to be." 

* * *

They had found another life sign--two this time, both human. Following it had led them to a clearing on Oren III, where a shuttle seemed to have crashed.

It was a Federation shuttle, from the USS Discovery. Gabrielle’s heart raced. Was this from her timeline? Was she about to find out the fate of everything she had left, in her absence? 

Neither of the life signs seemed to be inside the shuttle. Both seemed to be further into the trees. A short way into the forest, Gabrielle and Captain Georgiou found someone laying on the ground, in another time suit just like the others.

Captain Georgiou knelt down by the person and started to brush dirt off the front of their helmet--when suddenly, they lunged forward and grabbed Georgiou’s arm.

Georgiou kicked back at them, forcing the newcomer to let her go, but they swung back, not seeming dissuaded. Gabrielle pulled out the phaser she’d brought from the ship and tried to stun the person in the suit, but both the newcomer and Captain Georgiou were moving too quickly for Gabrielle to get a good aim. The captain had managed to get herself free, but the newcomer wasn’t letting up, moving with a speed and precision Gabrielle hadn’t thought would be possible while wearing that time suit. Captain Georgiou, however, had the advantage of not being in the suit, and she seemed to be holding her own--until the newcomer crossed into the shade, the captain seemed to get a good look at their face, and her eyes widened with shock. “ _You--_ ”

There were more footsteps approaching--it had to be the second life sign they’d found. Gabrielle fired the phaser again just as someone else ran out of the trees and said “Philippa, what’s going on--”

This time, Gabrielle didn’t miss. The suit seemed to partially block the energy beam, though; the newcomer stumbled backwards as it hit them, but recovered quickly.

“Philippa, stop!” It was Michael--this one looking just like the one Gabrielle had spoken to on the Discovery. The one from her own timeline.

“What about--” Gabrielle started to say--and then she realized who this person in the time suit had to be, just as the person in the suit took advantage of Captain Georgiou’s momentary distraction at Michael’s arrival to shove her against a nearby tree.

“Let her go!” Michael said. 

“Oh, there’s no need for that. It’s not as if I was going to _kill_ her,” the person in the suit said--and though her voice was muffled by the helmet, _Gabrielle knew that voice._ “I just had to make sure she knows there will only be room here for one of us.”

The person in the suit took off the helmet--and a second Philippa Georgiou stood in front of the captain. And Gabrielle was pretty sure she recognized this one.

_“Philippa, where have you been?” Michael and most of engineering had been scrambling to finish the time suit as the rest of the crew fought the Section 31 fleet. “We have to go, we have less than no time to--” Then she noticed the blood in the corner of Georgiou’s mouth, and that streaked down the arm of the under-suit she was wearing. “What have you been_ doing _?”_

_“Oh, Michael, you didn’t think I was just going to let Leland--or what used to be Leland--run wild all over this ship, did you?” She walked over to the empty suit that was in the middle of the shuttle bay, waiting for her. They'd created it based on the schematics they'd gotten from Section 31, but with one key difference that was essential to what they were about to do. “I took care of him. Permanently.”_

_“That’ll delay Control, but it won’t stop it,” Michael said. “It’ll take over someone else, or something else, next chance it gets--we still have to go through with the plan.”_

_Georgiou ran her fingers over the time suit, over its neck and down its chest. “Seems quite sturdy. For your universe, I’m almost impressed.”_

_Michael slid the time crystal into place, and the suit hummed to life, fitting itself around Georgiou’s body. Michael still wasn’t at all sure about this plan. They knew the second angel was Georgiou, they’d confirmed as much… but it just didn’t seem like the way Georgiou did things. That would be more like… well, going off and killing Leland instead of reporting to the shuttle bay at the predetermined time. Michael had insisted on accompanying Georgiou in a shuttlecraft to keep an eye on her; perhaps surprisingly, Georgiou hadn’t protested that at all. Maybe that was a good sign?_

_But Michael knew Georgiou wasn’t the type of person to let anyone tell her what to do. Not even time itself._

“Captain?” Michael said, turning towards the first Georgiou, the one in the Starfleet uniform. “What--what is this place?”

“As far as we can tell, a space between timelines,” Captain Georgiou said. “So far, there only seem to be a few of us here--all from timelines in potentially apocalyptic danger.”

“You didn’t--did a starship come after us? The USS Discovery? It was supposed to be following behind us…”

“I don’t believe so,” said Captain Georgiou. “At least, our sensors didn’t detect any such thing.”

“No…” Michael’s expression looked stricken. A horrible feeling was starting to come over Gabrielle, too. “How did we end up here? We weren’t supposed to go here.”

* * *

This couldn’t be how the timeline Gabrielle came from ended. It just couldn’t. After all she’d been through, all those years being pulled back and forth through time, after all of that she couldn’t have failed. Not because of some anomaly getting in her way and her mission being taken over by someone who, whatever Gabrielle had thought she’d seen, apparently really did have no care for anything or anyone but herself at all.

“It seems this is on me,” said the other Georgiou. “I believed that in your reality, pulling someone into another dimension on a whim was considered an acceptable way to resolve a problem. Clearly I was mistaken. I have no idea what could possibly have given me that impression.”

“Clearly,” said Gabrielle.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s hardly my fault that the gateway didn’t see fit to let the ship through.”

“You didn’t care if it did. You didn’t know if it would or not because that was never supposed to be what happened. You were fine with abandoning the plan, abandoning an entire universe to be destroyed as long as you didn’t have to be caught up in it--”

“Your timeline means nothing to me. Leaving it behind is hardly a sacrifice.”

“Why did you do it?” None of this made any sense. “Why would you even take the suit? Did you really just want to get out of there that badly?”

“Well, isn’t this a change? Last time we spoke, you were talking like you thought you knew me. Like you were sure any day I’d see the light.”

“Clearly, I was wrong. And it wasn’t only me you fooled. I don’t know how you got Michael to let you put on that suit--”

“Me? I didn’t do anything. It was always me who made the signals, apparently. And when everyone started _insisting_ I take on this incredibly powerful piece of technology that would leave all of time and space open to me… what was I going to say? No?”

“So you never had any intention of doing the right thing,” said Gabrielle.

“Leaving your phrasing aside… I did plan to take the ship through the wormhole, at first. I figured, why not? As I told you, I was pulled away from my life’s work, from the empire I made stronger than it ever was, long ago. After that, what was another nine hundred years?”

“So why didn’t you?”

“There was no way. There was no seventh signal. Well, there was--and then there wasn’t. There went the way forward. So I took what I could get.”

“And you took Michael with you.”

“But of course,” Georgiou said. “It would hardly serve my purposes to leave her behind. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same--oh, but you didn’t.”

“Fuck you.” _How dare she. I don’t care what you think you’re emperor of, you don’t say that to me._ “I had no choice and you know it.”

“Yet you wouldn’t even speak to her when you arrived. And they call me the heartless one.”

“And what if I had?” said Gabrielle. “You just don’t get it, do you? None of you get it. _None of that matters if the world ends._ ”

But that wasn’t all there was to it. She already knew it couldn’t be. She hadn’t gone to Essof IV to save the galaxy, after all. She had gone there for one person and one person only. And she’d wanted nothing more than to run straight to Michael, to hug her, to apologize for everything that had happened and everything she had missed, to make sure her daughter was all right and that no harm would come to her.

But she couldn’t do that. Her mission was so much bigger than that.

_I couldn't save Mike,_ she thought. _I couldn't go back for my baby girl. I haven't been able to stop Control from ravaging the whole damn galaxy._ And now the time crystal was gone, rendering years' worth of work-- _work my family was ripped apart in the service of_ \--useless. She didn't want to believe she was powerless here, that all of it had been for nothing, but she didn't know what else to do.

Except that two people had come into this strange place between realities wearing suits just like hers, and yet not hers. Two universes' worth of people had picked up Gabrielle's mission where she'd left it, and come up with their own plans--plans that were strikingly similar to each other.

Plans that had both gone wrong, when the time travelers had wound up here instead.

_But this doesn’t have to be how it ends,_ Gabrielle told herself. _I already know I can change things. I can change this. I can fix this. I don't know how, but there has to be something._

Gabrielle thought of Michael--the Michael from her own timeline, whatever that meant anymore. She thought of everything she'd seen of her daughter over the years of Michael's life. She thought of what she'd seen on Essof IV when she'd arrived--and she knew, different as they were, her own Michael would do the same as the one from the Vulcan ship had done. _Maybe I just have to make sure she gets where she needs to go--and that when she does get there, she isn't alone._

_I can't stay here, and I think I know what I have to do._

* * *

More gateways kept opening, all over this strange world they had arrived in. Sometimes, the Shenzhou crew found someone, or multiple someones, who had come through. If they wanted to be, they were all welcome on the ship.

They mapped each gateway as they detected it, and eventually a pattern was found that allowed them to predict--not perfectly, but pretty well--where the next one would appear. Finally, it wrapped back around to the one Gabrielle had come through.

On the day it was set to open, Gabrielle prepared to beam down to Wen II to wait. If all went according to plan, she should be pulled right through, back to her base on Terralysium in the distant future of her own native timeline. 

Michael--the one from the Shenzhou--came to the transporter room to see her off. There were tears in Michael’s eyes as she reached out to hug Gabrielle. Gabrielle pulled Michael into her arms. _It’s the least I can do._

“You’ll see your mom again,” Gabrielle said. _And I’ll see my Michael again. I know I will. Whatever it takes, I will._

“Do you know that?” Michael asked.

“No.” Gabrielle had never seen into this particular timeline--how could she have, when its existence was down to her never having started this mission to begin with? “But I know her.” She kissed Michael’s forehead. “And I know you, baby girl.” 

* * *

When the by-now-familiar feeling of being pulled at top speeds across space and time ended, she found herself back on Terralysium. 

Something felt different. She wasn’t sure why.

Something shiny caught the light a short distance away. Gabrielle went towards it.

It was a large piece of metal, perhaps part of a small spacecraft of some kind. Something that had been destroyed here, perhaps just above the planet and rained debris down--

\--but every other time she had come here, there had been nothing of the kind _._

For the first time in a while, Gabrielle thought about allowing herself to hope.


End file.
